Getting What You Want

It is very interesting when you finally get something that you want - especially if it is something that you have been wanting for a long time. Sometimes it is everything you thought it would be and it is thrilling. Sometimes, it is even more than you imagined (Heaven will be like that). But other times, and very often, it is not quite all that you thought it would be. (As an aside, I think marriage falls into all three of those categories!) Let's just say that I am experiencing the latter option with my new teaching position. Teaching is not something that you "ease into". I don't mean to imply that you don't prepare - you do! A great deal between your education classes, certification, training, room preparation, lesson planning. But the actual teaching - the position of having a classroom and being responsible for its students, is immediate. One day you don't have students in your classroom, and the next day, you do. There they sit at 8:40 A.M on the first day, new school supplies in their hands and eager expectation on their faces. And you have them all day for the next nine months (kind of like gestation). And you have to at least appear like you know what you are doing, that you are in control, and that you are happy to be at school (It is a toss-up as to which of those is most difficult!). But it actually isn't the teaching/lesson planning part that has proven the most challenging. It is the........discipline. Oh yes. What happens when little Johnny (or in my case, Juan) doesn't want to listen? He would rather sing a song, draw a picture, kick the person sitting next to him, flirt with the girl across the room, play a game, talk about a game, or make obscene gestures to the student in the next desk. And you, poor, idealistic, new teacher, you don't want to discipline. You don't want to go through the three steps to a detention, move the student to another seat, rearrange seats, call parents, or CONSTANTLY reprimand the student. You just want to teach about continents and read "The Hungry Caterpillar" to them. And hopefully have an "Anne of Green Gables" moment. (I will be sure to blog if such ever happens to me!) In short, words that describe these last three- going- on -four weeks are: overwhelming, exhausting, frustrating, challenging, draining, consuming. Please pray with me that I would have the wisdom to handle classroom management, strength and refreshment, a joy in my work, and the ability to "have a life" outside teaching as well. Don't read me wrong, I do have enjoyable times and like my students. It is just.....a lot. And on that note, I say goodnight :)